Charity Shop update

In one respect, I am very fortunate, I actually love my job! I relish my role as an Assistant Manager in a charity shop. I am doing something I was born to do. I am lucky that I work alongside such wonderful volunteers who are willing to give their time to helping our tiny shop raise funds for our disability charity.  I love sorting through donations and helping staff beautify the little shop with wonderful finds. Its a job where I am constantly having to decide whether stock is up to standard and how much to price items. Because stock is donated it also entails trying to figure out what certain items are, how they work and if it is expensive, some idea of its origins. Every day is different.

Our shop is a little unusual because it is situated on 3 floors of an old Victorian house. The sorting room is enormous, I think it used to be a front room back in the 19th century. The windows still have their original sash chords and the fireplace is situated behind our stash of hangers. Its a lovely bright room and you can often hear the pigeons cooing in the eaves outside. There is a small yard outback which backs onto the undertakers. Quite often when we go out to the bins we are greeted by hearses  waiting to take the coffins on their final journey. Such is the circle of life, we have sacks which tell such stories of births, children growing up, teenagers, moving on and death. Great care is taken that nothing noisy is disposed of into large wheelie bins while the hearses are out there!

The shop itself although small holds a surprisingly large amount of stock.We primarily sell clothes but we also sell alot of bric a brac too.The majority of our customers are elderly so we provide a chair which is often host to husbands young and old who wait while their spouses persuse the shop floor. Hopefully we will be giving the shop a lick of paint this year to make it even more brighter and welcoming. I am looking forward to some of our display models being replaced though, they are really old, one even has a plaster on her bottom although the customers would never know it!

We are minutes away from a large Pavillion which hosts many shows and exhibitions which helps with our footfall of customers. Its lovely here during the summer. We are only a 'stones throw' away from the beach so we tend to get invasions of coach loads of holidaymakers and students( sometimes they can't all fit in!) The smell of the sea, the screeching of the gulls and the waft  of fish and chips from across the road are just the icing on the cake for me.

Moving on

I think there comes a point in life where as hard as you try to fit in and make a situation work, you just know in your heart of hearts that its never going to happen regardless of how hard you try, so it was with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to my drumming group last week. I am disappointed that it didn't work out for me, I loved the drumming side but found it really hard to form any meaningful friendships.

I initially joined after the sudden death of my best friend 2 years ago, i just felt, I needed to live a little. Its strange but although I enjoyed the dressing up and playing to audiences, I rarely felt relaxed with this merry band of drummers to the extent I never was able to let my hair down and get drunk! Upon reflection, I think maybe I was looking for something on a deeper level and maybe it was this that may have made people wary of me, I don't know but however hard I tried I just couldn't really change the situation. The turning point came when a friend told me that I could be experiencing negative karma, seeing as I couldn't really place a finger on what was really wrong. When I thought about it I did think she may have a point, the town I grew up in  has become very drab and hostile in certain places, the childhood memories, although happy are also tinged with  melancholy, losing my parents months apart during my twenties. Instead of feeling elated whilst marching down the holidaymaker ridden streets of the Old Town, I'm just sad my music loving father isn't there to cheer me on. I am certainly much happier working and living in the town next door. The residents are kind and polite and although populated largely by retired people and at times seems a little dull, it has that genteel quality about it where people have time for each other. Its strange but I do feel a completely different person when I'm there and I know in my heart there is good karma. So now I have to try again. I have now embarked on a new venture with a small group of people in the town I love. A part of me would eventually like to try and help form another drumming group here, a much smaller one where we can share mutual interest and work together in harmony and very importantly, have fun.